“You’ve got to be nuts if you think I’m giving up everything we have worked for all our lives to just sell everything.”

That was Ricky Duncan’s response to his wife Linda’s dream of selling everything they owned to hit the road and see this vast country up close and personal. His dream, he says, was to buy a house and live there in Bogalusa the rest of his life.

As it turned out, they did live in Bogalusa, and happily. But as they years passed, Ricky’s health deteriorated. He underwent surgery on his right shoulder, rotator cuff repair, in 1999. Then, in 2001, he had major back surgery: two discs were removed and two titanium rods inserted. For a couple of years, things seemed to improve, but in 2003, Ricky needed a double bypass to correct three heart blockages.

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By the time Katrina blew through Bogalusa in 2005, Ricky’s health had declined to the point that simple chores like gardening and mowing the lawn proved more and more difficult for him.  The storm and the destruction it left behind caused Ricky to rethink his answer to Linda. Maybe she was on to something, he thought.

“One day,” he said, “ I surprised her and asked had she given up on her dream to travel. Of course, she said she hadn’t. That was the turning point for the Duncans. They put up a for sale sign and eventually found a buyer.

After all the devastation left in Katrina’s wake, Ricky said, they realized that all the stuff they once thought they had to have was not that important anymore. He and Linda held garage sales and sold everything that wouldn’t fit in their camper, ready to begin their new life.

“So,” Ricky said, “our journey began.”

Ricky Duncan was born in Angie, the son of Arthur and Vernie Duncan. After living most of his life in Bogalusa, he graduated from Bogalusa High School in 1970.

His wife, Linda, is the daughter of Thurman and Myrtle Hunt of Isabel. She graduated from Enon High School in 1969. Ricky and Linda married and began their life together in Bogalusa.

Ricky is no stranger to illness. When he was just 9 years old, his dad died from lung cancer at the age of 40. At the time, no one could imagine what a toll cancer would take on both his and Linda’s families.

By 1975, 15 years after his father’s death, he lost his mother to breast cancer, after it metastasized to her lungs. She was 50.

After years of working in the paper mill, Ricky was diagnosed with asbestosis, which, he says, can lead to mesothelioma, a form of lung cancer caused by exposure to asbestos.

“My asbestosis, I think, is from exposure to asbestos in the mill in the early ‘70s,” Ricky says. “I’m not holding the mill responsible, though. I drove heavy equipment for 20 years at the mill, but I’m not saying the mill is responsible.”

Most of his health problems are a result of wear and tear on his body from all of the years of hard work, and just from getting older, he says. And after all the sickness and death he has seen in his family, he realizes that life can be fleeting.

“I want to do and see as much as I can before it’s too late, or I’m too old, whichever comes first,” he said wryly. “Hopefully, too old. When life deals you lemons, you make lemonade.”

Linda’s family has also suffered greatly from cancer. Her sister recently lost two of her children to cancer, within three or four months of each other. Another sister lost her husband to cancer and two cousins have also been lost to the disease. Neither Ricky nor Linda has been tested to see if they carry a familial gene that might cause cancer.

“What will be, will be,” said Ricky philosophically. “All we know is, we have today. Tomorrow is not promised to no one.”

Ricky and Linda Duncan sold their house in April of 2007 and headed up the East coast in their camper, ending up in Bar Harbor, Maine. They spent about seven months on the road, visiting many beautiful places along the way, from Myrtle Beach in South Carolina, to the outer banks, Cape Hatteras and Cape Lookout in North Carolina, to Jamestown, Yorktown and Williamsburg in Virginia, and on to Washington, D.C., Lancaster County, Pa. and Mystic, Conn. After reaching Bar Harbor, they stayed on for a bit to see New England’s autumnal color changes.

Then they continued on, through New Hampshire, Vermont, upstate New York, Lake George, Lake Placid and then down through the western part of Pennsylvania, through West Virginia, down through Tennessee and then back to Bogalusa for the Thanksgiving holidays.

That seven-month trip was just the beginning. After the spending the holidays with family and friends, they set out for Grand Isle, where they spent the winter. As spring arrived, the now-experienced travelers took off in a different direction, north to Idaho, through the Black Hills, through Yellowstone National Park, Custer State Park, Sturgis, North Dakota, Mt. Rushmore, the Grand Tetons, down through the Columbia River Gorge and on to the coast of Oregon.

Heading south on the Pacific Coast Highway, they entered northern California, winding their way through the redwood forest to Lake Tahoe, Yosemite National Park, up across the Sierras and into Barstow, California, home of Death Valley. From there they headed south toward the Grand Canyon and back to Louisiana. It was October 2008 and they set up camp at the Fair Grounds in Franklinton, just in time for the Fair. They had been on the road for about six months. Once again, they spent the holidays in Bogalusa, then settled in Florida for the winter.

So now it’s 2009 and the Duncans have been working their way back to Bogalusa, having been to Virginia, Bristol, Tenn. and the Shenandoah Valley. They plan to be back in Bogalusa by the end of October to visit with family and friends during the holidays, before hunkering down for the winter in south Texas.

During their travels this past summer, Ricky and Linda have seen and done some extraordinary things. In July, they joined Walk About America’s Climb for Cancer, to help raise awareness and money for cancer research. They hiked about eight miles up Mount Rogers, the highest peak in Virginia, with just a handful of breaks, quite a feat for someone with as many health problems as Ricky Duncan.

Not satisfied with just working for cancer awareness, Ricky is also growing his hair to donate to Locks for Love, a public non-profit organization that provides hairpieces to financially disadvantaged children in the United States and Canada under age 18 suffering from long-term medical hair loss from any diagnosis. 

“I’m donating my hair in honor of my sister-in-law, Eloise Duncan, who has been through a hard bout with stage-4 breast cancer and is now cancer free. Tough!

“I hope this will help in some way,” Ricky said. “I don’t know how much longer I have on this earth, but I’m living my life to the fullest.”

The Duncans will be heading back to Louisiana soon, anxious to have time to spend with family and friends. Linda’s son and daughter-in-law, Chad Cothern and Andre, live in Baton Rouge. They have two children, 11-year-old Caroline and Cameron, who is 6. Ricky and Linda communicate with them through Facebook while on the road. Being away from their son and his family is very hard, says Ricky, and spending so much time away from them was “one of the hardest decisions we had to make,” he said.

“We set out on our journey over two years ago, traveling from coast to coast, enjoying life. Our favorite saying is ‘The joy is in the journey, not the destination.’ My wife likes ‘We are not lost, just exploring.”

“No regrets.”